It’s the big day for Love Data Week! Today I am featuring a few of my favorite tools using my own qualitative dataset.

I am working on my PhD in History and, although I am still early in my program, I began research for my dissertation this year. I am currently examining a set of petitions sent to the U.S. Congress that were calling for action during the Armenian massacres of the 1890s. Instead of just reading through and taking notes in Word, I decided to collect information systematically so that I can use the data for a potential digital humanities project.

As I read through, I collected the dates, locations, types of meetings, representatives, and then notes on the language used in the petition. I originally entered the information in Excel because I needed to finish a short paper, but I am switching to a Qualtrics form for final analysis. I still need to test it out and make sure it will work for my questions. I mocked this up in half an hour at the most one day before I went to NARA. If you have suggestions, let me know.

Qualtrics is easy to use and a more reliable way to input data because you can control the types of fields that can be entered. For example, I am interested in changes over time, so I can control both the date fields and the congressional information and avoid input error. Moreover, the data can be exported easily and analyzed in any software. Because I have a large set of petitions, using a system like this is absolutely necessary and more reliable for counts and a broad overview than just taking notes on the petitions.

Petition from Boonton, NJ

Once I had a starting set, I used OpenRefine to clean up some fields. OpenRefine is a much easier and more reliable tool for cleaning data than Excel. For example, in my spreadsheet I was collecting information about the specific representative to whom the petitions were sent. Again, I want to know about this issue over time, so I’d like to see if individuals were receiving specific petitions multiple times and if they got petitions on other issues. But as you can see from this picture, the handwriting is not often legible. This is actually one of the easiest to read. As such, because I was inputting data under a deadline, some of the names of legislators are inconsistent (see the image below). I can use OpenRefine to easily and quickly clean fields. So, for example, all the fields with Fletcher, Minn can quickly become Fletcher, MN. Also, if I have trouble making out someone’s name on one petition but can see their state, I can use OpenRefine to give me clues as to the name from other petitions.

My dataset in OpenRefine

The tool can do much more than this. Definitely worth checking out for spreadsheet cleaning!

After I cleaned up my spreadsheet, I mapped the petition origination locations just for fun. I used Google Fusion Tables because we have GAFE at UNCG and I wanted to test it versus ArcGIS Online. For simple mapping, it is quite helpful and easy to use. As long as it can recognize location fields (City, State for example), it will try to map the data. I used this to get a sense of where the petitions were coming from. While I thought I knew because I read each one, it was difficult to get a sense of geography after reading over 200 petitions. I assumed most would be from the Northeast, but I was surprised by the actual geographic spread. Of course, a lot more could be done with this. For example, the size of bubbles could be changed depending on the number of petitions from a location.

Next, I did some basic text visualization using Voyant to explore the themes. I uploaded parts of the petition that referred to the role of the state (my research question) just to explore. You can do several things with Voyant for basic text mining, but the word clouds are always fun. You can also see the most frequently used words. In this case they were government (24), Turkish (20), people (19), humanity (18), right (17). Again this was a subset of my petitions (only one column), but it gives you the idea of what you could do just starting out.

I’ve also played around some with Atlas.ti for my documents that are not petitions, especially my primary source newspapers. I haven’t done much with that yet, but I love the iPad version of Atlas.ti and can see it as being useful later on when I have a larger set of primary documents to work with. It is mostly used for qualitative data work in the social sciences, but if you are a historian working with Atlas.ti, Nvivo, or Dedoose, PLEASE get in touch with me. I would love to have some use case scenarios.

Eventually I would also like to do some basic network analysis using Gephi but my data is not ready for that. And of course I could never go anywhere without my Zotero library that provides immediate access to all of my secondary sources and some primary documents! Yes, that is data too!

Historians wanting to do more systematic examinations of their “data” sets of primary documents should check out the Programming Historian. You can do a lot of analysis now that you couldn’t do even five years ago, but you need to start by collecting and managing the information systematically. If you would like tips on doing this, please contact me and we can talk through your project!

Photo by Harold C. Jaquith. Used with permission of Beth & Bill Jaquith.

This picture is of a small boy who was part of the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece in 1923 after the signing of the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations.” We do not know for certain his nationality, his religion, or his name, but we know his family was a part of the exchange and he and many others were considered refugees. We have these pictures because of the efforts of the Near East Relief service and a small group of Americans and British humanitarians.

Refugee crises almost always accompany war, and World War I was no exception. The response to WWI’s refugee crisis was piecemeal and chaotic. Frederick Leith-Ross, a British economic advisor, insisted in 1943 that more lives could have been saved after World War I if there had been more planning before the end of hostilities. As a result, the international community collaborated before the end of World Wart II to create the United National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, an international effort to provide food, emergency provisions, and health services to those impacted by war. The organization had flaws and many obstacles to its effectiveness, but it provided the foundation for later international efforts to protect refugees that emerged with the Refugee Convention of 1951. According to Article 1 of the Convention, a refugee is a person who “owing to wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality.” Refugees are by definition vulnerable populations in need of assistance. Although the US is not a party to the Convention, we are party to the Protocol of 1967. We also have obligations to refugees under the older Geneva Conventions.

Through the creation of these institutions, the United States and its presidents played important roles in shaping refugee policy. While this influence often had self-interested motives, the US was at the table providing resources, aid, and input. We knew it would be in our interest to create a mechanism to assist those fleeing persecution or war, those leaving their countries in fear for their lives.

At the same time, our leaders created a process that would vet refugees carefully with attention to their backgrounds, ideologies, and roles in combat. This policy has tightened considerably since 9/11, making resettlement in the US a lengthy and expensive process. The United States helped to set the foundation of the refugee resettlement regime, and yesterday President Trump’s actions undermined that legacy. He has reduced the number who could be allowed in, increased the timetable unnecessarily, and redefined our refugee policy to exclude refugees based on specific country of origin.

Let’s fight back. Learn about the convention and the current international and American process for vetting refugee claimants on my page about Refugee Resettlement. I will be adding more links and information as possible. Get involved with your local resettlement agencies or give money to support a national service. Call and email your Senators and Representatives. Bring attention to this issue and educate your friends and family. Fight lies with history.

I am presenting this book to my class on Wednesday and need to work through some thoughts beforehand. So if this review seems disjointed it is because I’m still getting my head around his arguments. Basically he is examining the origins of the ideology of manifest destiny in American thought and political culture. While we can point directly to John O’Sullivan who coined the term in 1845 when he wrote that the role of the US is “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions,” Stephanson argues that the broader idea of manifest destiny is rooted in the Puritans’ understanding of themselves as God’s chosen people.

He then looks at how this religiously rooted ideology develops over time and negotiates expanding US borders. This religious ideology then becomes intertwined with agricultural and industrial capitalism and mutates into a more secular understanding of manifest destiny, but while the national ideology takes on a new character, “the sacred-prophetic impulse never waned” (110). The interesting difference in these two ideologies is that the older religious idea of manifest destiny focused on a predestined future of God’s chosen people, while in the newer ideology will be determined by individual agency.

The most interesting chapter to me is his closing essay where he discusses President Wilson’s time up to the 1990s. He critiques President Wilson’s understanding of the United States’ role as the leader in the world and how that is still infused with a prophetic mission. This translates into a principle of universal right that believes it is always right and sees those who disagree as “inhuman or criminal” (119).

Interestingly he ends in the mid-1990s (the book was published in 1995) and maintains that the difficulty for the US is that it has lost its defining enemy with the end of the Cold War, and therefore “simple concepts super-imposed on simple divisions and simple enemies no longer suffice as basic ideological props of American geopolitics (129).” I would love to see an update to the work in light of the past decade’s events. Have we invented a new enemy in “terrorism” based on our understanding of America’s destiny?

I promised myself I would write at least 24 reviews for Cannonball this year and I have written exactly one. I’m reading a lot, but no time for writing it seems. So, in the name of a snow day, here is review #2!

This semester I am taking a graduate class on the history of human rights. It has been fantastic even though snow has interrupted it twice now. One of our first books was Inventing Human Rights by Lynn Hunt. She examines the language of human rights as it emerged with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the American Declaration of Independence. She argues that before and during that time period we see a change in thinking and a rise in empathy towards other people. This coincided with the emergence of new popular literature, the epistolary novel, as well as shifts in perceptions of torture and its purpose.

The strongest section is her chapter on Richardson’s Pamela and Rousseau’s Julie, the two big epistolary novels of that time period. She does a nice job explaining how these works could give rise to empathy for others. Of course she can’t make a causal argument, but she attempts to show how people identified strongly with the “fate” of those main characters, so much so that they begin to think they were real. (It reminds me of the Harry Potter fan base especially with Rowling’s reinterpretation of Hermione and Ron’s relationship.)

The challenge with this book is that she is trying to make a much stronger argument about empathy, and I don’t think she succeeds. In arguing for empathy she is actually arguing that it is a biological change in how we think about others–that our brains fundamentally change. It is an interesting argument, but how on earth do you prove that, especially in relation to historical events and people. Luckily she doesn’t dwell too much on this idea and the rest of the book is still fascinating and well worth a read if you are interested in human rights history.

I tend to read books in pairs. I get restless with one so I need something different to switch my focus. I thought it might be fun to write about the two I just finished even though I can’t find much in common between them. The two from this week are dissimilar on so many levels.

Don’t misunderstand me, Larson’s writing is a pleasure to read. The problem is the subject matter. Larson is focusing all of his excellent writing ability on an American family that moves to Germany after the father becomes the first American ambassador in Hitler’s world. They arrive in the mid-1930s, right when things start going downhill. This is a great set up, right?! But what happens? Not a darn thing. They go to parties. They drive around. The daughter has sex with everyone and supposedly (maybe, not really) becomes a potential Russian spy (we think). The father pines for his farm and his unwritten masterpiece on the Old South. To his credit, he tries to warn the US that something is going to happen, but is ignored. The mother perseveres in the face of the stupidity around her and then dies. A cast of German (to be) killers passes in front of us looking like a bunch of clowns and buffoons for the most part. Basically it is the chronicle of when Germany waited…and waited…for something to happen.

There are moments when it becomes more exciting. The Night of the Long Knives is the most interesting part of the book. The problem is that this episode came after I had read through 2/3rds of the book. As my husband said, no one should have to wait that long before getting to something interesting. I kept with it because I like Larson. If I hadn’t read him before I might have given up like so many others. If you are really interested in Hitler’s Germany and REALLY want to know what the American ambassador was doing then (and who his daughter was doing), this is a book for you.

Sad to say, but I got so bored with this book that I kept picking up Sanctus by Simon Toyne. While I’m not a fan of religious conspiracy thrillers, I have read my share of them (cast offs from my mother and yes I will read most anything). I have to say this one is pretty good. In the story, a man throws himself off of a mountain monastery in an ancient city in Turkey and it goes live on television. Through some convoluted detective work they find his long lost sister in America who journeys to Turkey to find out what happened to her brother. She then becomes the central character in an attempt by the monastery to cover up everything (and basically kill off anyone involved). Ultimately the monks are covering up the true nature of the Sacrament inside the walls of the monastery, which if uncovered would change the world. Basically it is the set up for his next book in which the sister gains some bad-ass powers and stuff happens (haven’t read it yet).

In comparison to In the Garden, this one kept my attention. He has the Dan Brownesque style where each chapter is a ‘scene’ and drives the momentum of the reader. In contrast Toyne tends to make things up whereas Dan Brown “reinterprets” already existing reality. So, for example, the town in which all the action takes place is fictional and there are other elements created to suit his purpose. With the exception of a few groan-worthy moments (I won’t give them away), he does a pretty good job of inventing a mythology and keeping the reader invested in the action. If you like religious conspiracy action novels and are looking for a fun beach read, this is definitely one to find at your local public library.

I will leave you with this. As un-PC as this is, apparently there is a Hitler is bored video meme. I leave you with “Hitler and the bunker are really bored”. He must have read In the Garden.

Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954 by Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery is remarkable for its scope. It covers the entire range of the colonial experience from the political, economic, and cultural effects and from the beginnings of colonization to the end after France’s defeat at the battle of Dien Bein Phu.

The French authors aim to create a storyline that doesn’t take sides but shows the interaction of colonizers and colonized, and for most of the book they do this. At the same time, most of their sources are French and they end the book on a strangely sympathetic note. They write

“French colonial imperialism, in the midst of acquiring a new historical shape and a neocolonial project, finally found the political will to take on the issues concerning the development of colonized peoples. It was just then that imperial France was overtaken by Indochina by the unforeseeable: a national, communist revolution that was radically decolonizing and pregnant with another historical project (379).”

This closing commentary seems to indicate that France was going to modernize (doubtful) and that the Viet Minh emerged out of nowhere (?!?). Overall it is a wonderful piece of scholarship and worth a read if you have a strong interest in France’s relationship with Vietnam.

Embers Of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Frederick Logevall picks up at the beginning of the World War II and the start of France’s downfall and takes us through 1959 when two Americans are killed at an outpost near Saigon. Along the way he discusses not only France’s actions and mistakes, but also the place of Vietnam in the emerging Cold War and American anti-communist hysteria.

Logevall is a historian at Cornell University and is an excellent writer. He approaches the story from the level of the individuals involved and the choices they make along the way. In this sense it reads almost like a work of fiction because you have a strong sense of the main characters and how they interact with others. While it is a long book, it is so well-written and engaging that it is difficult to put down. I was actually late getting to work one day because I wanted to finish a chapter. If you are interested in the Vietnam War from the American perspective, you absolutely must read this book. It demonstrates nicely the beginnings of our involvement and why it later became America’s Vietnam.

Both books are worth reading, but I would recommend Logevall for casual history buffs. It is definitely a fave of 2013.

I’m doing pretty well with the Cannonball this year, but this week may push me behind. It might be time to break out the Dresden novels and YA. Recommendations?

This week I am moving away from the historical fiction and into the histories of Vietnam. I’m taking a class on the Vietnam wars (yes, plural) and will be reading a few books this semester. The first Vietnam: Rising Dragon by Bill Hayton was a nice introduction to the current situation in Vietnam. Keep in mind we are simultaneously reading scholarly articles on the ancient history of Vietnam, so I think the professor wanted to give us a vision of what is to come so that we didn’t all drop the class.

Bill Hayton is a journalist who works for the BBC and was working as a reporter in Vietnam, and his book provides a clear and comprehensive picture of the issues facing the country. Each chapter covers a particular area of life from a focus on the environment, to the development of democratic institutions, to corruption, ethnic relations, and more.

After this book was published in 2010 the Vietnamese government banned Hayton from traveling to the country. You can understand why the book would cause alarm as it covers so many of the problematic areas in Vietnamese life, especially the tendency for personal interests of elites to be predominant in decision-making. He doesn’t make any broad proclamations about Vietnam’s trajectory but sees it on the cusp of either a bright future with many changes or stagnation and mismanagement (and environmental destruction). It is a shame that he was banned because it is pretty obvious throughout the book that he loves the place and wants it to be a “rising dragon.”

This is not just for the Vietnam bound or Southeast Asian fans. Read this if you are interested in international politics and the rising areas of influence in the world. Considering Vietnam is the 13th most populous country. Considering President Obama has proclaimed a Pacific Pivot. And considering the rising dragon is nestled in the armpit of China, this is a country to watch.